Author: Manoj Joshi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 14, 2001
New Delhi: Senior government officials
here say they are "heartened" by signs of Pakistan making an effort to
put an end to sponsoring terrorism and maintain that the U.S.-led campaign
is already paying dividends for this country.
The first sign, said a senior official,
was last Wednesday's fire at the Pakistan army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
"We have now confirmed that the fire that burnt for five long hours reduced
the administration and training directorates of the Pakistan army to ashes,
but miraculously stopped short of the operations directorate."
Indian intelligence officials say
these two directorates housed all the files relating to the Pakistan army's
involvement in Afghanistan. These included the list of personnel seconded
to the Taliban as well as their training and service records.
But the official maintained that
the replacement of Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmad as the ISI chief had by no means
eliminated those in the agency who had been encouraging terrorism and had
provided it financial and logistical backing.
Another top official revealed that
Pakistan was now taking steps to dissociate itself from terrorist activities
in the Kashmir Valley. The first signal was Gen Pervez Musharraf's acknowledgement
that the October 1 blast was an act of terrorism. This was done during
his conversation with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last week and,
in a sense, it was the first time for any Pakistani leader.
The official said, "We have confirmed
reports that Pakistani terrorists are pulling out of the Valley, along
with the Afghans who had been asked to redeploy back in Afghanistan earlier."
He added, "Take this with the destruction in Afghanistan of camps being
used to train terrorists for Kashmir and you can see what India has gained."
He also pointed to the perceptible decline in the number casualties of
security personnel in the Valley.
But he acknowledged that there was
a flip side to this-thousands of Kashmiri militants languishing in Pakistan
were now being pushed back into the Valley. But, he said, if the Pakistanis
stopped cross-border support, India could wrap up the indigenous militancy
swiftly.
The official assessment is that
the die-hard Pakistani groups could still cause mayhem but Pakistan is
being forced by circumstances to live up to its long-held claim that all
it provides Kashmiri separatists is "moral and diplomatic support". According
to the official, now that Pakistan has joined the coalition against terrorism,
it has to work along with the logic of its campaign.
Despite these signs, officials said
it was a bit too early to assume that things would work along rational
lines. "The situation is much too fluid to make predictions like that,"
said another official. "With the United States taking a tough stand against
terrorist attacks in our neighbourhood, there is understandable public
pressure on the government to take a tough stand against Pakistani support
for cross-border terrorism as well," he added. While the government has
formally played down suggestions that it should undertake cross-LoC strikes,
some senior officials in the government said nothing could be ruled out.
"A lot has changed since September 11," said one official.
